7 ms·

One thing that people aren't considering is that we have legalization experiments within the United States, and we have seen an uptick in marijuana usage[1]. T

• dkroy 9y ago
  How has this affected tax revenue on these legalization experiments? How has this affected drug related crime as well? Is this increase bad? I would love for someone to dig up these answers as I have referenced Portugal's policy in many arguments, but never the ones we have been trying out here at home as they are newer and often more restrictive in comparison.
• eberkund 9y ago
  I haven't heard it argued that legalizing drugs would decrease usage. Just that it would lead to safer usage, reduce crime, destigmatize addiction and allow for better treatment of addicts.
  • ht85 9y ago
    You're correct that addicts won't stop using because of decriminalization, but it does open new ways of helping those people. Instead of forcing them to hide, prosecuting, incarcerating and labeling them as undesirable members of society, you can create infrastructure and programs that could help many of them deal with their issues over time. Sometimes the hardest part of exiting addiction is that the only people who understand or tolerate you are other addicts, creating a very hard to escape circle.
• fabrice_d 9y ago
  The benefit of legalizing marijuana is not to decrease usage but to cut financing to dealers. It is also safer for users, and reduces the risk to exposure to more dangerous drugs.
  • loeg 9y ago
    Dealers are fine (after all, consumers aren't expected to grow it all themselves); the problem is the flow of money back to the cartels.
    • gt_ 9y ago
      Maybe this is nitpicking, but I’d rather see more opportunity for small businesses operating in the honest open than for black market operations. As with a lot of the convo here, the idea is a hollistically better society. Black markets create a lot of tangential issues.
      • loeg 9y ago
        By "dealer" I am referring to a purveyor of drugs. Not specifically legal or illegal. Ideally they would operate legally, but that's currently impossible under federal law.
    • pixl97 9y ago
      Legal vs illegal dealers are two different things. A legal dealer/grower is expected to follow certain laws and provide a safe product. In return for a high demand product they have to follow licensing rules and have a safe product. An illegal dealer has the incentive to make as much money as fast as possible because of the risk of future prosecution. It is more beneficial for the illegal dealer to switch you from $100 of weed per month to $2000 worth of heroin per month. It has a much worse health outcome for you, but a better financial outcome for them.
      • loeg 9y ago
        They might have that incentive, but there is a reputation aspect I think you're ignoring. Most illegal marijuana dealers I've met were just interested in selling weed to anyone who wanted to buy it to pay rent, tuition, or support their own use. They operated under fairly low margins for a small business and essentially didn't price in the legal risk. One guy I know only made about $10-12k/yr in profit. None sold heroin, as far as I know.
• andrewstuart 9y ago
  Where does the assumption come from that the idea is to decrease usage? I would expect drug usage to increase when legalized.
  • berbec 9y ago
    I would expect that for marijuana usage would increase. I do have my doubts we would suddenly see a rapid spike in meth usage.
  • bsenftner 9y ago
    That expectation is purely based on anti-drug propaganda. In every published study, the legal availability of marijuana reduces usage of other, harder drugs. It even reduces usage of alcohol. It is in the statistics of study after study.
• ekianjo 9y ago
  > we have seen an uptick in marijuana usage Isn't that a desirable thing from a government standpoint? More tax income from legal sales? The point to legalize something is that you put some controls in place to know where and how, and at what quality it's being sold, not to have its consumption decrease.
  • loeg 9y ago
    Opponents would argue the inverse: We criminalize something to have its consumption decrease. So the idea that consumption would rise if legalized means to people of that mindset that the status quo is working. (I don't share this view.)
• wdewind 9y ago
  There's a lot here that needs to be picked apart. Here are the major things you're missing: 1. Marijuana has been researched extensively and its health effects are at worst similar to alcohol, at best significantly less bad for you. In that context it makes sense to think of marijuana as a consumer product, and it makes sense that requiring a consumer product be sold in a dangerous and unregulated way would reduce demand for that product. Under these conditions we can expect legalization to increase demand, and it has. 2. Portugal's policy is decriminalization not legalization, and its success has not really been about soft drugs, it's been about hard drugs. People who do not have some kind of mental illness do not use hard drugs frequently for the same reason people without mental illness do not drink bleach: it's bad for you and if you care about yourself self-preservation is important. Portugal's solution is about the people who don't or are unable to care for themselves, and recognizing that the drug use is a symptom of that, and that you cannot fix the underlying mental issue by putting people in cages. Their solution is not "stop doing anything and fully legalize," it's "require people to be treated" instead of "require people to sit in a cage." Under these conditions we can expect decriminalization to decrease demand, and it has. Edit: Also, I do very much agree with your larger point re: overconsumption, and I'm not saying we should ignore that problem either. Mental health in this country is a disaster, I just don't think putting people in cages is the solution.
  • nkurz 9y ago
    I rarely downvote clear and well-written comments just because I disagree with them, but feel I need to make an exception here. Your "1" is true, but you prefaced it by claiming that it was one of the "major things" the parent was missing. I'm pretty sure he wasn't missing this, as indicated by the sentence "This uptick has been benign because its been limited to Marijuana". Number "2" adds useful distinctions regarding the Portugese approach, but I don't think there is any basis for your statement that "People who do not have some kind of mental illness do not use hard drugs frequently". This is tautologically true if you define addiction as mental illness, but would you really claim that no one regularly uses heroin because they became addicted to after starting with prescription painkillers, rather that they use it regularly only because they have an underlying non-drug related mental illness?
• BatFastard 9y ago
  One things Marijuana legalization has done is decrease opioid usage in states that have legalized it. It has also reduced drunk driving rates. Of course taxes are nice, and removing the money from the underworld is a big win too.
  • barsonme 9y ago
    > It has also reduced drunk driving rates. What happened to the overall DUI rates, though?
    • ewjordan 9y ago
      I'll take 10 stoned drivers over 1 drunk one any day of the week. Stoned drivers may be slow as hell and really annoying, but drunk ones speed and kill people all the time.
      • omginternets 9y ago
        This is the kind of thing that really needs to be cited.
        • DanBC 9y ago
          https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/ > Detrimental effects of cannabis use vary in a dose-related fashion, and are more pronounced with highly automatic driving functions than with more complex tasks that require conscious control, whereas with alcohol produces an opposite pattern of impairment. Because of both this and an increased awareness that they are impaired, marijuana smokers tend to compensate effectively while driving by utilizing a variety of behavioral strategies. Combining marijuana with alcohol eliminates the ability to use such strategies effectively, however, and results in impairment even at doses which would be insignificant were they of either drug alone. Epidemiological studies have been inconclusive regarding whether cannabis use causes an increased risk of accidents; in contrast, unanimity exists that alcohol use increases crash risk. Furthermore, the risk from driving under the influence of both alcohol and cannabis is greater than the risk of driving under the influence of either alone. Future research should focus on resolving contradictions posed by previous studies, and patients who smoke cannabis should be counseled to wait several hours before driving, and avoid combining the two drugs.
• cm2187 9y ago
  Agree. And it is not clear if other factors aren’t responsible for the reduction in Portugal too. Like regular cigarettes aren’t cool anymore, people increasingly are looking for healthy living habits. Would be interesting to compare if cocaine use in other Southern European countries also reduced over that period. It feels kind of awkward to try to ban cigarette while promoting cocaine use at the same time. That being said as a libertarian I am of the opinion that it’s not for the state to tell people how to live their life, and if they aspire to become junkies, let them live.